Murillo: Persuasion and Aura

Studies in Baroque Art (HMSBA 16) B. Navarrete Prieto Murillo: Persuasion and Aura 348 p., 14 b/w ill. + 272 colour ill., 225 x 300 mm, 2021 ISBN: 978-1-912554-40-9 Languages: English Hardback The publication is available. Retail price: EUR 205,00 This book examines how Murillo constructed his paintings and the devices he employed to provoke responses in the viewer, both then and now. Murillo has attracted particular attention from historians since the seventeenth century to the present day, though opinions of his oeuvre have varied from period to period. The communicative power of his paintings, both then and now, has led him to be used and exploited for different ends. He deliberately cultivated this quality from the time he became an accomplished artist in his native Seville, where he enjoyed great prestige during his lifetime thanks to the resources of his art, his talent and his ability to elicit emotions and arouse passions. His paintings, as if they were prophecies, can only be understood from a visual culture approach and by analysing what his images provoke. Their seemingly easy and familiar appearance is merely the mirror that Murillo, with his command of local codes and the devices of painting, places in front of viewers to trigger a complex empathetic process designed solely to persuade and seduce them, often anticipating their response. Benito Navarrete Prieto (1970) is Assistant Professor in the History of Art at Universidad de Alcalá and Director to the Department of History and Philosophy. He has been (2011-2015) the Director of Cultural Infrastructure and Heritage for Seville City Council and in the past has worked as a lecturer at the universities of Valencia, Oviedo and Valladolid. He has curated numerous exhibitions (1998-2017). He has worked as a scientific advisor for the Diego Velázquez Research Centre. He has been visiting professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas de la UNA, the Universidad Iberoamericana of México and the Ospite Scientifico at Kunsthistorisches Institut-Max-Planck-Institut in Florenz.Language : english text - codice articolo 013013